Construction of a new family of high efficiency bacterial expression vectors: identification of cDNA clones coding for human liver proteins.

Construction of a family of bacterial expression vectors, pEX1-3, is described. These vectors are derived from a cro-lacZ gene fusion plasmid which expresses large quantities of fusion protein under the control of the PR promoter of bacteriophage lambda. A polylinker has been engineered into the 3' end of the lacZ gene in all three translational reading frames, and stop signals for transcription and translation inserted, so that any open reading frame DNA may be expressed as a hybrid beta-galactosidase protein. cDNA fragments cloned in these vectors can be detected with an efficiency of greater than 1 in 3, thus enabling the detection of rare cDNA molecules. In addition, the low solubility of hybrid proteins leads to a rapid isolation procedure allowing antibodies of pre-determined specificity to be made against expressed regions of cloned DNA. We describe the cloning of albumin and complement C9 genes from a human cDNA library using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies.